A dishwasher not cleaning dishes properly can have various causes. It’s rarely anything serious. If it’s a relatively new dishwasher to you and has never performed well make sure you are using an appropriate wash cycle for the level of soiling. There aren’t usually many wash cycles to choose from on a dishwasher but you can still get big differences in temperatures, wash intensity and wash results. This article is for when the dishwasher appears to run OK and finishes in normal time, but wash results are disappointing.

I first wrote about the potential dangers of liquid detergent capsules and tabs in 2009 after I saw in the news that a baby was “badly burned” by a washing machine detergent when gel from a liquid capsule had been trapped (partially undissolved) inside a vest. The vest was then unfortunately put onto the child without the gel being seen.

Life used to be much simpler, especially where washing machine detergent was concerned. I’ve just found a fascinating old publication by one of the leading detergent manufacturers Unilever – but back when even their name was simpler and they were just called, “Lever”.

Believe it or not, a dishwasher making whistling noise could have an unexpected cause. According to a dishwasher manual I’m just reading, one of the “malfunctions” it advises on is if, “there is a whistling noise during washing”. The advice is that this is not a cause for concern, but to try using a different brand of detergent.

Unlike washing machines, dishwashers need to be set up for the correct water hardness levels. Manufacturers use factory default settings that try to be suitable for the average house in the UK. However, as water hardness varies considerably from area to area this means yours could be set too high or too low. If using all in 1 multi tab detergent -especially in a soft water area you might be able to stop using rinse aid altogether and save money.

John Lewis Extras

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